Posted on 04/29/2008 7:33:15 PM PDT by Coleus
Girls aged as young as 12 are having abortions, figures released for the first time by the Department of Health reveal. The figures, obtained by The Sunday Times using freedom of information legislation, show that each year 10 to 15 girls aged 12 have abortions.
The government initially refused to disclose the figures by claiming patient confidentiality. The Sunday Times successfully appealed against the refusal and the information commissioner, a government authority which promotes access to public information, ordered the statistics to be disclosed. While some doctors reacted with sadness to the figures, family planning experts said society needed to “stop being shocked” that children were having sex and becoming pregnant.
Ann Furedi, chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, which runs a chain of abortion clinics, said: “This is a tiny number of girls. Children grow up very quickly in our society. They are maturing faster physically, psychologically and socially, and society just has to come to terms with that.
“Both parents and teachers need to be able to provide them with the sex education information they need.” Dr Rhona Knight, a GP in Leicester, believes that girls are being put under pressure to have sex at such a young age. “In my experience girls are not choosing to have sex; it is just happening. The message given out is that the boys will use a condom or the girls can go on the pill, but they end up pregnant which is extremely sad. We need to empower these girls to realise that they do not need to have sex at that age,” she said.
The figures, which the Department of Health has withheld for three years, show that in 2003 10 girls aged 12 had abortions. This increased to 15 in 2004. The figures also showed that 138 girls aged 13 had abortions in 2003, which increased to 142 in 2004.
Disgusting
And to think people dismiss it as no big deal.
Why are 12 year olds having sex? They should be playing with dolls and thinking ( “thinking”) about makeup. Jesus help us!
its ok as long as their not mormons... mormon girls who get preggos @ 14-17 should be ripped from their family but an abortion is no big deal. At least the mormon kids have a chance @ life...
I wouldn’t be so sure about that...now that the mormon girls are in state custody.
The Texas rangers need to invade England and put a stop to this.
Just curious, but does anyone know why, scientifically, girls and boys are becoming sexually mature at a younger age?
Teenage girls are getting pregnant all over the U.S. by older men and getting abortions (some by force and intimidation) to get rid of the evidence and the would-be fathers skate, laughing all the way to the bank.
To be consistent, the state of TX should go and round up all the children of teenage girls and dump them in foster homes, no trial, no jury, no judge.
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Let me guess, you are LDS, no?
Physically they may be mature. Socially they may feel pressured. But no way are they psychologically mature. Ironic that now they say they want to empower girls to say no when for the last few decades they have been advising them that having sex is their right and none of their parents’ business.
I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I am a Mormon. I am also opposed to people crapping all over the Constitution.
Dolls and thinking about make up, Yeah that’s what I was thinking. Didn’t “liberal empowerment” lead to sexually active 12 year olds to begin with?
Liberal (and all variants) … a dirty word in my vocabulary.
Cool... Too bad that's not what this is about.
It's probably the parents and teachers that are responsible for the pregnancies. .
Like many words liberty has been misused for so long its real meaning is lost.
Liberty 1.freedom from arbitrary or despotic government or control.
Everything else is irrelevant.
I forgot to put in my point. “Liberals” today actually destroy liberty. When a right has to be imposed on the beneficiary the right is most likely not beneficial.
Didn’t say liberty (I can understand your reference), I said “liberal” … open-minded or tolerant, esp. free of or not bound by traditional or conventional ideas, values, etc. In other words, anything goes. ;-)
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